“We have two ears and one mouth, so we should
listen more than we say.”

― Zeno of Citium(334-262 BC)

A
famous text outside of today’s Scripture says “to whom much is given, much will be required” (Lk. 12:48).There is certainly something that should be recognized
about the requirement placed upon you, who Sunday after Sunday, listen to
preachers and their sermons.Much is
required of you, I only hope as much is given.

In
regard to listening, Jesus had an interesting phrase in Mark’s gospel.A more recent version of the Bible translates:
“Whoever has ears to listen, should pay
attention” (Mark 4:23, CEB). The King James version sounds a little
redundant, but is more concise: “He who
has ears to hear, let him hear!“When
I was a kid at church, like most children, there were times I didn’t care to
listen.For my punishment, since my
mother was most often sitting behind me, she would use her finger to thump my
ear to remind me that I should straighten up and listen.

In this
fourth chapter of Mark, if you’ll excuse my expression, Jesus is about to
‘thump’ our ears to get us to pay close attention.Mark’s Jesus is about to speak in
parables.Not everyone is going to
understand, so he asks his disciples to pay close attention.Truth
is now under construction in your ears ; are you listening?While Mark doesn’t take the time to share as
many ‘parables’ as Matthew and Luke, he does expect us to ‘listen’ very intently to these he gives.Mark’s
Jesus even tells us why Jesus came to
speak in parables in the first place.

Most of
us should already know the answer.As
we’ve already seen in Mark’s gospel, people are already out ‘gunning’ for Jesus
(3.2; 22).Because of those opposing
him, Jesus explains to his own disciples that most will not understand what he
is about.“The secret of God’s kingdom has been given to you, but to those who are
outside everything comes in parables” (4:11), he says.Jesus then continues to tell them why
this is happening?It’s a bit shocking,
are you ready?”This is so they can look and see but have no insight, and they can hear
but not understand.Otherwise, they
might turn their lives around and be forgiven (4:12).”Did we
just hear, what it sounds like we heard?How could this saving, full of compassion Jesus, aka, the prince of
peace, who said, “Father forgive”, ever
say something like this?

EVERYBODY WON’T UNDERSTAND

It
sounds hard and harsh, but sometimes, reality can be that way.Everybody
who hears the truth, or even knows the truth, will not actually live out the
truth they know to be true.The
seeds of the word of truth, which Jesus tells us about in his very familiar parable
of the sower, are being broadcasted all around, but who is really listening?Who is getting it?Who will rightly respond?

Here, I’m
reminded of the Donald Trump phenomenon late last summer.Most every republican and democratic knows that
Donald Trump is a Billionaire; neither a statesman nor a politician.He really shouldn’t be up there, they said.He insults people.He tries to bully, divide conquer and
hurt.He seldom gives real answers.He mostly recognizes the problems.But what was so crude and rude about him is
also what many liked about him.He’s not
the average person running for office, who must say what others want him to say.The Donald only says what he wants to
say.

Donald
Trump is someone much like Jessie Ventura.Don’t you remember Jessie “the body” Ventura, the championship wrestler
(or fake wrestler, that is) who once became the governor of Minnesota?Everyone seemed to know that electing Jessie
‘the body” was a joke, but at the time, people in Minnesota had rather elect a
‘joke’, than have their elected leaders play jokes on them.Perhaps Donald Trump is like the once
electable “Jessie the body Ventura”.Perhaps are tired of the same ole’ same ole’ in the political arena.People would rather elect a clear ‘joke’ than
be fooled by one.If this is what’s
going, things may be worse than we thought.

For
what it’s worth, what has always fascinated me about moments like this in politics
is that political pundits and experts are seldom able to predict just how crazy
and unlikely everything will turn be.Democracy
is unpredictable.Even as “The Donald”
still kept going up in the polls, everyone was predicting his popularity would
not last as long as it did.But it did.The ‘rude’ and ‘crude’ Trump was not being
serious or sane about the issues, the other candidates protested, but it still
‘trumped” what all the other candidates were saying.Even when Fox News did not take “The Donald”
seriously enough, Donald Trump trumped their version of the “truth” too, even though
they too were saying that his version of the truth wasn’t true.But no matter what ‘truth’ anyone else was
saying, it seemed that it was only “The Donald’s” version of the truth that was
getting through, and it didn’t matter whether it was all true or not.

Interestingly,
that whole situation was not unlike what Jesus is saying in this text.The ‘word’ of truth was being broadcasted like
seeds are thrown around, but most are not taking root in any real way.The ‘seed’ of truth falls on hardened
ground.The birds come and take the truth
away before it can germinate.The
ground is not only hard, it’s also rocky, and the good soil is too shallow.There’s just not much of the truth can do to
take root.Even when it does take root, it
only gets burned up in the ‘heat’ of the moment.Thorns and weeds are everywhere.Jesus wants us to know just how hard it can
be to get the real truth across.Unless
his disciples make some extra effort
to understand exactly what’s going on, they will not get to the truth
either.There is always much more
working against truth to keep it from bearing any real fruit than is working
for it.In a world of hard ground, shallow
talk, all kinds of weeds, and heated arguments, how in the world could the
truth ever hope to get into our lives?

When I
lived in Europe, the official churches were, for the most part, empty.There are all kinds of reasons the church is
‘officially’ dead in Europe.In Germany,
much of the church died at the hands of Adolf Hitler, who killed it by mixing
religion and politics, convincing the church to follow him in his own lies and deceptions.In Europe today, it could be claimed that
since “enlightenment’ has finally trickled down to the people,science, materialism and social welfare
advancements have put the church and ‘the truth’ out of business.Perhaps,
the church may still have something nice to say to children, to the aged, for the
oppressed or for the downtrodden, but now that science has finally given us a whole
new set of answers about life, who needs religion or the church? Besides, aren’t most of the world’s violence
and problems due to religion?

A while
back I read a very interesting article at the British paper’s website called The Guardian posing this exact question:
“Doesn’t religion cause most of the
conflict in the world.”What made
the article interesting was that the answers it gave did not come from experts
but from people, some religious, some not.One answer came from a Muslim, another from a secular Jewish, one from
an atheist, and finally, they let a Christian have the last word.I guess they figured that, in the west at
least, the Christian has the most to prove and the most to lose.You should go online and read the article
for yourself, but the overwhelming message was it is ‘careless’ ‘exaggeration’
to say that religion causes the major conflicts in the world. While it is true that people have used
religion to fuel hate, commit murder, or to fight wars, people have found just
as many ways to fuel hate, stir violence, commit murder, or fight wars, without
the help of religion.

.

In this “Guardian” article it was the ‘secular’
Jewish fellow who told the most interesting, distrubing story.He referred to a discussion that Christopher
Hitchens and Richard Dawkins had at a dinner in London back in 2012.It was not long before Hitchens’s died of
cancer, when they were both known as two of the most eloquent atheists and
anti-Christian thinkers in the world.It
was at that party, that Dawkins asked Hitchens: "Do you ever worry that if we win and Christianity is destroyed, that
the religious vacuum this creates will be filled by Islam?"Their point sounded a dangerous truth loud
and clear: If people stop believing one thing, they will only start believing
something else or they may be forced too.The real question in life is not
“will we believe” but “what”, “who” or “how” will we
believe?We WILL believe something (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/02/religion-wars-conflict).

Interestingly,
the wholescale questioning of all religious belief by some does not prove Jesus
wrong, as much as it proves Jesus right.Truth seldom bears the ‘fruit’
it should, not because it isn’t spoken, but because it isn’t wanted.This is why Jesus feels he must speak in in parables---stories that require effort for
the listener.Jesus doesn’t speak in
‘parables’ because he wants to confuse people, but he speaks in parables
because people sometimes don’t want to understand.Quoting the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 6: 9-13),
Jesus recalls another time prophets spoke the truth to people who didn’t want
to hear it---and who would not listen until it was too late.But even if most don’t want to understand, Jesus
doesn’t want his disciples to become discouraged. Though it has always been this way, it doesn’t
have to be this way with them.

THOSE WHO LISTEN WILL BE FEW

Jesus
says that for those who ‘listen’ and
‘pay attention’, it will make a
world of difference in their hearts and in their lives.He says that those who ‘hear the word (of truth) and
embrace it’ will ‘bear fruit’
that gives great yields, sometimes even up to one hundred times above their own original investment of listening
(4:20).Wouldn’t getting higher dividend
off of your investment make you also want to ‘pay attention’?

When I
went to college I made better grades than I did when I was in High School.I made better grades in College because my father
was now more obviously paying for my education.It was part of the promise he made to me, when I worked in the family business
for a small weekly allowance that came with a promise that he’d send me through
college.

After I
graduate college, I got married and went to back to Seminary, not once but
twice; once for a master’s degree, and then later for a doctorate.It’s interesting to see that the more of my
own money I had to invent, how even better
my grades became.In high school I had a
B+ average without much effort, but in college, with Dad footing the bill,Igot
an A minus average, graduating with honors, putting in more effort.Then, when I got to Seminary, when I had to
foot the entire bill, even though I was also working as a pastor, I got an “A”
average.

Finally,
when I completed my doctorate, we only had eight classes, with a final doctoral
project.I made “A’s” in all those
classes, except for one.It was the very
first class, which was the most difficult and most subjective, where we had to
share our life stories and literally ‘pour out hearts and souls’.When I got my grade, I expected an “A”, but
got my only “B” of those three years.I
was very disappointed until later, when I discovered that all the other nine
students also got “B’s”.We got together
to asked the two professors why they gave us all B’s.They answered, “We knew you will work hard
and make A’s the rest of the time, so we had to give you a “B” now, when the
class is very subjective.Besides, in a
class where have to tell us who you are, only Jesus could make an ‘A’.You can’t be Jesus, so all get a ‘B’.If you think about it, this might even help
you in your ministry more than anything else you’ll ever learn.

While
we can’t certainly can’t know, in our right mind, the truth like Jesus declared
saying, “I am the truth”, we can
know the truth Jesus gave us in these parables.Jesus even went on to say if his disciples would receive this truth,
they would even receive more of it: “Pay
attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get,
and still more will be given to you.(4:
24-25).Isn’t Jesus right?This is how the truth works, isn’t it?If you learn the basics of math, the basics
of science, the basics of language, or even the basics of theology, you can
more easily learn more of it.It’s the
same in all of work and life too.But
if you don’t’ master the most basic ideas, formulas or skills, then you will
eventually run into a roadblock that is very hard to overcome.Isn’t this why Jesus also added a severe warning to those who would reject
the most obvious truth being broadcasted
around them:“To those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing
(of the truth he means), even what they
have will be taken away” (Mark 4: 25). Is this any way to talk, especially here
at Christmas?

Well,
isn’t the ‘truth’ what Christmas is finally all about?“The
Word of truth has been made alive in flesh and blood and is right in front of
us” (my own translation and interpretation of John 1:14). If we accept this word as truth, not simply
as an idea, but as Jesus himself,who is
the truth,we’ll keep getting more ‘truth’
into other areas of our lives also.But
if we reject this truth, which God intended for us, not against us, then soon
enough, all the rest of the light will fade too, until life becomes very dark.

When
the communist overtook Europe, they had developed their own version of truth
that went to the truth of about Jesus Christ.Part of this was easily detected in what the communist government did to
Christmas and Christmas songs.Since
they knew that they would not easily eradicate Christmas from the social
customs and psyche of the people, they decided to leave the tunes and the
traditions, but would only change the words of the songs and the religious meanings
of the Christmas traditions.In short,
they took Christ out of Christmas,
but left the mention of goodwill, the gifts, and the good wishesfor health and happiness. It went
fairly well, at least at first, until the reality began to set it, the money
ran out, and then, the darkness came upon them with a vengeance.The deep ‘darkness’ of that communism was
not only what Communism believed, as it was this belief about reality that was
forced upon them through fear and intimidation.(Check out the East German book or movie, “The Lives of Others” and you’ll see how dark life can be, when any
kind of ‘truth’ is forced on people).

One thing
we can say for sure, when Jesus says he is making it hard for people to
understand what they already don’t want to understand, Jesus is not forcing his
truth on anyone.Today, as has always
been,Christians are a minority
people.Even though there are still 2.4
Billion Christians from a world population of 7.2 Billion, Christians are only
1/3 of the world’s people may be even less of a majority here in the United
States. Christianity has been on the decline in Europe for years, and now there
is almost no Christianity left in the Middle East.Just about all the churches mentioned in the
Bible, do not exist anymore.Several
years ago, I visited Turkey, where there is not one single church left that is
mentioned in the book of Revelation.As
church importance and church attendance falls among us, what will this mean for
the few who are left?Recently, someone
asked me, “Pastor, do you think the rapture is about to take place?”My answer was not as much about the rapture,
as it is about us, “At the rate we’re going, there won’t be anyone left to
rapture!”Do we still have ‘ears to
listen and pay attention?”

TRUTH WILL BE KNOWN BY ALL

What
does it mean when we Christians become a minority in the world around us?What does it mean when people don’t want to
hear or understand what we believe about Jesus Christ?Before I tell you what Jesus said in this
text, let conclude by telling you about something that recently happened to me,
when I was trying to tell someone a very important truth, but they weren’t believing
a single thing I said.

It happened
last year, when we heart breakingly had to turn our two precious twin
granddaughters over to Child Protective Services.As many of you know, our adopted daughter has
a very serious mental illness, and she was unwilling to stay with us and take
care of the children, so we decided it was best for them to go into foster
care.

When
the social worker came to interview us, we told her everything we could about
our daughter’s struggles.We poured our
hearts out to her, but do you what happened next?She acted
as if she didn’t believe us.She claimed
that my daughter would do better if we just left her alone.She said that she could get the children
back.We did not agree with the Social
worker, but we said, “OK, if that’s what you think, then it’s in your hands.”What else could we say?

Do you
know what happened?Our daughter has
gotten worse.Nothing that the Social
workers said came true.Everything we
told them, all the truth we told, all the things we predicted, has turned out
exactly, if not worse than we said it would.We are not happy about being right.We would have loved to have been proven wrong.The problem was, however, that the
professionals, who were supposed to know what they were doing, would not listen
to the truth we were telling them.I
can’t really say why they didn’t believe us, but I can tell you that now ‘the
truth has come out’.

They
haven’t apologized for the negative things they said about us, but who
apologizes anymore?

All
this that has happened to us reminds me this final message about ‘truth’ that
Jesus talks about in Mark. Right before
our text, Jesus has a message, I’ve been saving for the very end.Jesus says, that even if right now the truth
is not being widely received or is not
taking root and not bearing fruit, don’t be fooled.Some day,“Everything hidden will be
revealed, and everything secret will come out into the open.

Whoever has ears to listen should pay
attention!"
(Mk. 4:22-23 CEB)

The
truth is worth listening for and paying attention to, even when it seems no one
is listening.Do you know why? One day, Jesus says, everything “will come out in the open.”You
don’t have to force the truth on anyone, nor do you have to prove the truth to
anyone, but you should try to find and live the truth, because one day, some day,
some way, the truth will be fully known. Those who want to know the truth can figure it
this out.Those who don’t want to know this
truth, don’t figure it out only because they don’t want to.Jesus is not being cruel here, Jesus is just
being realistic.He’s realistic not so
some won’t get it, but in hope that we all someday will.

The apostle
Paul not only agreed that Jesus tells the truth, but Paul agreed that Jesus is
the way, the truth and the life: “One
day every head will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord” (Phil 2:10).But if this is all so true, why doesn’t God just tell us everything and
give us the kingdom (v. 30) right now?Why doesn’t God just reveal himself so clearly, that no one will mistake
him, no one will miss him, and everyone can know everything about him so there
won’t be one single chance having any doubt?Well, if this is how God would work, wouldn’t this sound an awful lot
like what I just said about the evil of communism?The evil powers would never give you any
choice in the matter.They only force
their own evil ways of ‘truths’ upon you.

In
Mark, however, we can see that Jesus is different, very different.Jesus speaks in parables because he would
never force truth, even his own.Jesus always
leaves us to freely choose or reject what, why, and who we will believe.You can also be sure that Jesus will never force
God’s truth upon you because this truth is not an idea, not a position, nor an
argument, and not even a religious belief, but the truth is something everyone can
and should believe in.You know what
that is, don’t you?

Let me answer
it clearly, with this single question: would you want to force someone to say that
they love you, when in reality you know that they really don’t?God is not out to prove a point, but God is
out to ‘prove his love for us’, that
‘even while we are still sinners(Romans 5:8).Even when we don’t know all the truth, and even when we don’t want to believe
any truth, God is not out to prove his point by pouring down judgment on us,
but God is out ‘to prove his love for us’
because this is the ‘judgment’ that came
down at the cross.God wants us somehow,
some way, and some day, to freely know this ‘truth’ which waits to be fully
reveal in us right now.

But you
can’t force love, can you?God waits on
you because the ultimate truth is not about ideas, not religion, not about politics,
nor is it about anything else in life, except that God wants to prove his love
for us, for now and for eternity.This
is why Jesus lived.This is what Jesus taught.This is of course, why Jesus died, so that
even while we are still sinners, God
can ‘prove his love for us’.

This ‘kingdom’ of love and gracehas come ‘near’ (Mk 1:15) in Jesus Christ, but it still remains ‘hidden’ because God still waits for the
kingdom to be received by and in us,
just as it has been revealed to us and for us, in Jesus Christ. If this kingdom of God is finally about God’s
love, then it must be just as freely received as it has been freely given. Only when this love has grown and matured in us
and in this world, will the kingdom come once and for all: “Whenever the crop is ready,” Jesus
says, “the farmer goes out to cut the
grain because it's harvesttime.” (Mk. 4:29 CEB).

God’s readiness
to ‘harvest’ His kingdom, is just as
much based upon our readiness to
receive it, as it is upon God’s readiness
to give it.Can we speed it up?Can we slow it down?Do you want to know the truth?Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father,
except through me? (Jn. 14:6). When God,
in his perfect love, decides that we are ready for the fullness of the kingdom,
then the kingdom will come and the truth will be fully known, just as we are
already known in God’s great love. Isn’t
it the full knowledge of this ‘love’ that makes everything ready to be fully revealed?But God will only give us, as much as we are able to hear(4:33).Are you still listening?‘Whoever has ears, should pay attention!”AMEN.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

“When his family heard
what was happening, they came to take control of him.They were saying.“He’s out of his mind!”(Mark 3.21).

“Life isn't meant to be easy, its meant to be lived; sometimes happy, other
times rough. But with every up and down you learn lessons that make you strong.”---Author Unknown

No one should ever say that the Christian life is easy nor that it ever gets
any easier to try to live it. Being a "Christian" wasn’t easy for Jesus
either.He was not immediately called Lord and Savior, but he was
declared by the authorities to be ‘possessed byBeelzebul, ruler of the demons” (Mk.
3:22).And not only were the legal and
religious experts calling him names, some of the negativity about him was also coming
from his own family, who said “He’s out
of his mind” (3:21).

I don’t often talk about this.I
don’t really like too, but it must be mentioned.When Teresa and I
announced that we were going to be commissioned as missionaries in Germany,
there was quite a lot of resistance.Surprisingly, most of it was coming from our own families.

The members of our families had several different ways of dealing with
it.Some were silent.Others were obviously unexcited.My mother said, “Joey, you don’t want to do this to me!”My father was overheard telling someone, “I don’t know why Joey wants to go there!”Teresa’s family were not very happy about it
either. When, at the commissioning service at Richmond, Dr. Keith Parks spoke to her parents, speaking about how proud they must be, they stood their frozen in silence. Coming family of seven siblings, there were even
more of them to make unhappy, and at one time, they even thought we were ‘breaking up the family!’

From all those experiences and surprises, I learned one thing.It’s one thing to go to church all your life and
to call yourself a Christian, but it’s quite another to start being a Christian by being who we say we are.

In the opening pages of the gospel of Mark, Jesus begins to practice the
things he believes in.It will
eventually get him killed.Within the
first three chapters of Mark’s gospel, we encounter 5 different stories of
conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities of his day.Jesus touches and heals a leper, he should
not have touched (1:40).Jesus offers
forgiveness to someone, as only a priest should do (2:1-12).Jesus eats with sinners, even calling one
to be his disciple (2: 13-17).Jesus
refuses to require that his disciples publically ‘fast’ like others do (2:
18-28).Worst of all, Jesus heals
someone on the Sabbath day, considering the needs of people more important than
the demands of religion (3: 1-6).These 'conflict stories' are proof that was not easy to be Jesus and
won’t be easy for us to follow Jesus either.Nothing that is worth anything will be easy, but it can be worth
it.

ACCEPT THE CHALLENGE

Today’s bible lesson helps us realize why we should follow Jesus, even when, as the gospel songs says,“It’s not an easy road!” Recently in the news,a judge told that two thirteen year-old- children, who tried to murder their friend, that they would be prosecuted as adults. They said that they were going to kill their friend, because the ‘slender man’
would hurt them if they didn’t. (http://news.yahoo.com/two-wisconsin-girls-tried-adults-slenderman-case-report-193515028.html).

Though their was
something outlandish about their crime, there is also something very common
about it.Too often, people
will try to take, what they see as the ‘easier’ way through a situation,
but as a result, they find themselves having to face life in an even more
difficult way.Only had these girls resolved to deal with
their problems with this girl in a much healthier way?Where were their parents?Were the parents also taking the easy way by
not being involved enough in their lives?What may have seemed hard in that moment, could have turned out much
better in the long run, if they all had only accepted the challenges in better
ways.

Jesus, certainly could
have taken an easy way too.Mark’s gospel doesn’t tell us much about Jesus' ‘testing’ in the wilderness, but the same victory over ‘temptation’ comes out in Mark's opening stories about Jesus' conflict with authorities.But Jesus doesn’t give in, nor does he give
up, when people were turning against him.He accepted the challenge of what it meant to live and bring the message
of God’s goodness and grace into the world.Even if it meant that he would have to
‘suffer’ and ‘to die’ doing it, which of course, he did.

Who would ever want to
accept a challenge that can mean death?Well, doesn’t living also mean that one day you will have to die?And will you fall for everything and live for
nothing, or will you live for something and die for something?Isn’t this the right mantra of the Christian
life?In Jesus Christ, we are called
not just to be forgiven, but we are also called to live, not to live above sin,
but to live and to die for something; toi always be working against our
shortcomings, with our struggles, even when we know our own failures and
sin.This is what it means to be human,
does it not?We are to answer the call
to both understand our limits, but also to reach to discover our God-given
potential, which is rooted, less in us, than it is rooted in the goodness and
grace of God.

These opening pages of Mark’s gospel, from one angle, can look insane.These first few stories come at us, one by
one, with extreme rapidity.Jesus
touches the untouchable.Jesus forgives
sin without a priest.Jesus eats with
sinners.Jesus doesn’t require his
disciples to fast.Jesus breaks
religious laws, even the most important of all to a Jew---observing
Sabbath.

We can understand can’t we, where Jesus’ family is coming from when they
come to their sibling and son to ‘take
control of him’, saying “He’s out of
his mind!”Genius, whether it has
been in spiritual contemplation, or even in scientific discovery, has often
been misjudged, at least at first, as being extreme, ridiculous and very
unreasonable.Nothing that Jesus seemed
to be doing appeared to be very traditional, conservative nor
conventional.Where do you think this
kind of ‘politic’ will take him?Is
Jesus really being smart?

But Jesus isn’t trying to be smart, but he’s trying to do the right
thing.Jesus is trying bring the
medical, religious, legal and political world back into line with common sense
and compassion.We can see this
now.He was reaching out to an outcast
leper, even if he is a leper.He was
offering forgiveness as a priority because it is our greatest healing human power.Jesus eats with sinners, because in reality,
in this world there is anyone better to eat with, especially when you want to
help people.Jesus does not require his
disciples to fast, because they’ve got better things to do and much more to
rejoice about in this moment.Finally,
Jesus does not require legalistic observances of the Sabbath, not because he’s
against it, but because he knows what the Sabbath is about---to meet human need,
not the needs of God.God is God, and is
in need of nothing, compared to what we need from God or from each other.While all that Jesus was doing seemed crazy
and even demonic to those around him, it was really, Jesus was the only ‘sane’
person in his very ‘insane’ world, but they couldn’t see it.We seldom ever do.

I’ll never forget receiving the call from a lady in the church who wanted
to talk to me about a problem she was having with her daughter.As I was driving to her house, I knew that
her daughter was attending one of secular, worldly schools, (at Chapel Hill, by
the way, but it could just as well been Wake Forest or Duke) and I wondered
what she had happened.After I arrived
and we got into the discussion, the mother told me that her daughter revealed
her plans of finishing her studies upon graduation, and instead advancing
herself with more degrees, perhaps in medicine, she was going to marry a man,
become episcopal, and then go to work helping unprivileged children in
California.The mother looked at me, and
frantically asked,“Pastor, how could
she do such a thing?How could she give
up her studies so soon and start working in such a low paying job?What’s gotten into her?

I thought for a moment, remembering a story Will Willimon once shared about
a similar situation.There was only one
answer:“Sunday School!”“What do you mean, pastor, she asked.“I mean that there is always the possibility
of trouble when someone gets serious about those things their parents and
Sunday school teachers are teaching them about love, compassion, about denying
yourself and taking up the cross and about being your brothers (or sister’s
keeper).We should have known, that
when people really get serious about this stuff, it could really spell
‘trouble’.

OVERCOME THE EVIL

Jesus was serious about the ‘things of God’ and he was willing to ‘go to
bat’ for the causes of the compassionate, coming kingdom of God.He was willing to say what needed to be
said, and he was willing to do what needed to be done.He was even willing, as the book of Hebrews
dares to say, to be willing to ‘learn
obedience throughthe things he would
suffer’(Heb. 5:8).You don’t accept a challenge like this
unless something beyond the norm of this world has gotten into you.And this something does not have to be bad,
it can be very, very good.

We can see this ‘good’ that was in Jesus even reflected in those who began
to oppose him and wanted him dead.While Jesus’ own family were confused about him, they really were trying
to protect Jesus and bring him home for his own good.But the legal experts and religious leaders
of Jesus’ day were not out to send Jesus home, they were so quickly offended by
Jesus’ who challenged their own authority, that even after they realized a
man’s crippled, withered hand, had been healed on the Sabbath, they got
together with people they didn’t normally like to ‘plan how to destroy’ (CEB) or ‘to
kill’ (NIV) Jesus (Mark 3:6).

There are all kinds of other ‘threats’ that come out against Jesus’
ministry, right from the very beginning.Even the demons that were being exorcised out of people, would come out
declaring him to be “God’s son! (Mark 3:11) which could get him convicted of
blasphemy by Jerusalem or of treason by Rome.Now, in the text before us,the
‘legal experts’ charge him with being in a league with “Satan” himself,only able to cast out devils because he has
the ‘power’ and ‘authority’ of the supreme demon within himself (3:22).Here, Jesus must defend himself, asking,
“How can Satan throw out Satan?”If a
kingdom is involved in a civil war, it will eventually collapse.It can’t endure.Then, Jesus reveals the heart of the matter.If they go against the ‘good’ that He is
doing, all in the name of God’s goodness and grace, then they are ‘insulting
the Holy Spirit’.This is the one sin
that can never be forgiven.If you call
good evil, and evil good, how can God save you when there is nothing left to
save?This is his point (Mk. 23-30).

When we read such an intense, dark, and difficult passage as this, it can
be very disheartening.Who can live the
Christian life when there is so much negative that will attempt to stand against
us?Who wants to follow Jesus, when it
will only get negative, hurtful things hurled at you?Who would, in their right mind, want to go
this difficult, hard and narrow way, when there is already so much stacked
against you?It doesn’t make sense does
it?It didn’t make sense being Jesus,
and it still doesn’t make much sense to get serious about following Jesus when
it can get you in so much trouble.

Our text from Mark does not yet fully answer, why Jesus had to be Jesus,
nor does it answer why we should follow Jesus, even when it can be hard.But we can see something already.There were people who did follow Jesus, even
when it was hard.There were already
disciples who wanted to learn from him (Mk 1: 16-20), leaving their fishing
nets to go with him to ‘catch people’.There were also apostles who wanted him to ‘send’ them out into the harsh
world to ‘preach’ this good news (3: 13-19).Even as some turned against him, and more would too, there were those
few who understood that Jesus had an ‘authority’,
or a ‘power’ and a ‘message’ over
the ‘evil’ they already knew too well in that world,which they had never observed in anyone else
(Mk 1: 27-28).

Later on, in interpreting the Christian life and what it means to follow
Jesus to the Romans,Paul writes that to
the same Romans the gospel of Mark was probably written to, explaining to these
Roman Christians, that if they really want to follow Jesus, and to find the
grace and goodness God has for them, then they must learn not to ‘pay back evil actions with more evil
actions’ (12: 17), but they must learn to ‘defeat evil with good’ and not ‘be defeated with evil’ (Rom 12:21). It’s certainly not an easy thing ‘live at
peace’ and not to ‘try to get revenge for ourselves’.But if we really believe in God, then we must
live like we do, and let ‘revenge belong to God’.Our task as Christians is not to solve all
the world’s problems, but to be a solution to the problems right in front of
us.“If your enemy is hungry, feed
him.If he is thirsty, give him a
drink.By doing this, you will put purifying
fires on and in his head.In this way,
good can overcome the evil, but you must join in this fight in this way.

REDEFINE YOUR FAMILY

So far, so good, right.The
Christian life is hard, but life is never that easy.Even if you try to make life easy, you’ll
just make it harder, so accept the challenge.And the challenge you should accept is to overcome the evil by doing
good, even when others call you names for doing it.People don’t like someone who reminds them of
what they should be doing, but aren’t.Get used to it.If you will keep
doing the good, sowing good seeds, a good harvest will grow and you will find
the good reward, even if you don’t please everybody.This is part of what it means to be
Christian as we accept the challenge to overcome the evil that still arises in
our own world.

But perhaps the hardest part of receiving the goodness and grace of God,
which may go against the grain of the world around us, is not what happens that
is hard for us, nor is it when people start to call us names.But perhaps the hardest thing that ever
happens in life is when our own family, friends, or church don’t fully understand
what we are doing, what we are saying especially when we are convinced that
what we are doing is right and is good.That
is when the pain of the cross, really comes home.It’s not when our enemies rise up against us,
but it’s when our friends and family desert us, rejects us, or can’t simply go
with us.This is what can and does often
bring the deepest human pain---the fear of rejection, being alone, or being
misunderstood.

If you follow your faith, and if you try to be true to your heart, you
always run this risk.Jesus himself
said that ‘foxes have holes, and the bird’s have nests, but the Son of man has
no place to rest his head’.That’s the
difficulty of rejection.We read it all
over the New Testament when Jesus is rejected as he announces his call to
preach, or when Jesus is run out of his own hometown, or finally, when Jesus’
own disciples desert him or when his people, some who may have never really
heard of him, are shouting out,crucify
him, crucify him!This was taking place
in the same Jerusalem who early in that same week received him like royalty,
but that was short-lived.

What will you do when you follow your faith or stay true to your
heart?Some, of course, are afraid too,
because they know what it might mean, and they love their family and friends so
very much.But I don’t think following
Jesus means that we have to abandon or reject our family, even if they don’t
always understand us.I do, however,
think that sometimes our family, will be like Jesus’ own family and at they
will not always understand us.But even
this should only be seen as only a ‘test’ of their love for us.Jesus’ family didn’t understand him, but they
didn’t reject him forever.Mary was with
him at the cross.One of Jesus’ brothers
became a leader in the early church.

In this text, as Jesus is misunderstood and rejected by his own family,
this is not the end of his relationship with them, but it is the beginning of redefinition.If Jesus is going to be who he knew he is,
then his relationship with his own family does not have to end, but it does
have to change.And so it will be when
we get serious about following Jesus too.Our family may not always understand, nor go where we go, or know what
we know, but if they are truly family, who have the capacity to love, one day
they will understand and love us. Until
that day comes, we must let them know where our heart is, just like Jesus does,
when he says,“Look here are my mother and my brothers.Whoever does God’s will is my brother,
sister, and mother.” (3:35).

Several years ago, a young man came to be and wanted to be baptized.But he had grown up in a communist country,
and his parents where against him coming to church and being in my Bible study
group.He asked me to baptize him.I told him that I believed his faith was
real, and I was ready and willing to baptize him, but I also told him that
since he was still a minor and living at home, that he should not go against
the will of his parents.Someday that
time would come, but he had to decide when that time was.I would not force it upon him, nor did I
think God would either.As he became an
adult, and was able to leave home, then, he could redefine who he was, on his
own terms, and on the terms that he understood to be the will of God.

What decision did he make?He
decided to wait.I took a lot of heat
for this advice from some missionary colleagues
who thought I should have at least baptized him in secret.But Jesus did not call us to be ‘secret’
disciples, but he did call us to have our own minds, to be our own persons, as
we understand and interpret the will of God in our own lives.I don’t think a parent nor a missionary
should violate or even force the heart of a person who is sincerely seeking God’s
will.I think freedom of conscious and
religion is the most wonderful thing, and does much more good than harm.But I also think Jesus shows us just how ‘serious’
this is, and calls us to ‘count the cost’ before we follow and walk the
narrowest way.The costs can be high,
but they will always pay high the highest dividends.Someday we will have to walk.Just like everyone must grow up and decide
their own lives,we should only accept
the challenge to overcome the evil around us, when we are ready to receive all
the goodness and grace of God which still means paying the costs that will be
incurred.

I think I just told you this story a few weeks
back, but it’s worth telling you again, just in case you missed it.Will Willimon, former dean of divinity and
pastor at Duke Divinity School, tells of a speaker he once invited to speak to some
of his students at Duke.The speaker
began his message by telling the students they would not like what he was going
to say and they would not want to do what he was going to ask them to do.He was going to ask them to give up all their
luxuries and go to some far off place, to some nobody, forgotten people, who
were poor, obnoxious and maybe underserving, and to give up their comforts to
serve their needs, and maybe not ever be thanked for it.He said he knew they wouldn’t do that, so he
closed the message he was going to share and said, he would leave the
application forms up front just in case, somebody wanted to see what he knew
they wouldn’t be interested in doing.As the speaker closed the session, and in great surprise to him, just about all those rich,
spoiled, kids came down and wanted to go and do what they shouldn’t have wanted
to go and do.And do you know why they
said they wanted to sign up for it? They
said that they were tired of having everything and really having nothing.They wanted their lives to count for
something!And they were ready to go
nowhere and even to suffer if they could have what they never had but wanted more than anything else. Do you know
what they wanted?They wanted challenge,
they wanted a greater good than 'goods' in life, and they wanted a family they could really call ‘family.Who would have thought it would have ended like that? We wouldn't, but maybe Jesus would. Amen

Sunday, December 6, 2015

“Which is easier---to say
to a paralyzed person,‘Your sins are
forgiven,’ or to say,‘Get up, take up
your bed, and walk?’ (Mk. 2:9 CEB)

"Why, sometimes I’ve believe as many as six impossible things before
breakfast.” ----The Queen in Lewis Carroll's Alice and Wonderland

It seemed like just another Bible Study on a summer Wednesday eveningat the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South
Carolina.A 21 year old Dylann Roof
entered off the street, was warmly welcomed, sat down to listen.For almost an hour after praying with and
hearing everything the pastor had to say, he stood up and opened fire on the
Bible study participants, killing 9, including the pastor, who was also a state
senator in South Carolina.

After the white supremacist murderer was captured apprehended the very next
day, Nadine Collier, daughter of one of Dylann Roof’s nine victims, had one
message for the suspected killer: “I
forgive you.”

At Roof’s bond hearing, Chief Magistrate James Gosnell allowed Collier to
deliver a statement to the suspect who joined via videoconference: “I just want everybody to know, to you, I
forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk
to her ever again, I will never be able to hold her again. You hurt me. You
hurt a lot of people. But God forgives you, and I forgive you.” The video
feed shows Roof watching with a chilling blank stare.

One may debate about timing of forgiving, but however you feel about
forgiving a murderer, especially one who had just killed a member of your
family, you must admit, those folks at Mother Emmanuel AME Zion in Charleston
put on quite a display of “their” Christian faith for the world to
witness.They certainly had a distinguished
role model too.As Jesus himself said, while
he was being crucified, “Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they are doing.”Dylan Roof knew what he was doing when he
murdered those innocent people in that historic church in cold blood, but maybe
those disciples in Charleston also knew what they were doing too.For no practicing and doing the hard work of
forgiveness is one of the marks of a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Mark’s gospel seems to be written in such a way to show that forgiving sins
was a top priority of Jesus’ ministry.This is made clear when a paralyzed man was surprisingly lowered down
through the roof and Jesus looks straight at him and says, “Child, your sins are forgiven!”(2:5). Even though some have suggested
Jesus was forgiving this fellow for destroying the roof of his home (which may
have been true), that would seem unlikely to be the whole motive since this paralyzed
man’s friends were actually the ones responsible.

Jesus’ agenda to quickly or immediately
forgive this man upsets the normal process of granting forgiveness, which it
was believed God would only do through
a ‘certified’ priest.By referring to
himself as “son of man” (NRSV) or ‘the human one’ (CEB), Jesus chooses a term
right out of the Hebrew Bible (Dan. 7: 13ff), referring to a savior-like figure
who was to come to usher in a new age, establishing God’s kingdom-rule and
judgement on earth (Mk 1.15). Ironically
Jesus uses this designation, not to mete out judgment, but as to offer God’s forgiveness
and grace to sinners.Jesus’ defines
himself as a ‘physician’ who has
‘not’ come ‘to call the righteous’
but has come ‘to call sinners to
repentance’(Mark 2.17).

Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross, which Mark’s Jesus defines as ‘giving his life as a ransom for many’(Mk
10.45) will later be interpreted by Paul and the church to be in sync with
Jesus’ own agenda and to forgive, which the apostle Paul understood as God ‘reconciling the world to himself through
Christ, by not counting people's sins against them. (2 Cor. 5:19 CEB).Thus, the agenda of Jesus in Mark is seen as nothing
less than the agenda of God through the entire gospel event.This desire of God to ‘forgive’ human sin
through Christ’s death on the cross is God’s desire to ‘show his love for us’ ‘while we were still sinners (Rom. 5.8).

Few would doubt that it’s ‘God’s
business to forgive’ (Heinrich Heine) sins through Jesus Christ, but it is
also just as important to the gospel message to understand that forgiveness
should be our human and Christian agenda too.It would be a tragic mistake to expect God’s forgiveness of us, without
our own willingness to forgive others.In
the middle of the Lord’s prayer and Christian piety are those unforgettable
words,“Father forgive us our sins (trespasses or debts), as we forgive those who sin (trespass,
debtors) against us.”

While Mark’s gospel doesn’t give us ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, it does give us
even more direct words from Jesus saying, “Whenever
you stand up praying, if you have something against anyone, forgive so that
your Father in heaven may forgive you your wrongdoings” (Mark 11:25).What this means is that there is no gospel
for you, unless you give gospel forgiveness to others in Jesus’ name.Isn’t this why that Amish community who had
five girls murdered forgave so quickly, even if it still hurt?Isn’t this why those hurting folks at Mother
Emmanuel Church in Charleston, S.C., also went against their own overwhelming hurt
and anger to forgive Dylann Roof?They
were not doing this for the
perpetrators were they?They were doing
this to preserve their own true
personal trust in God’s forgiveness.Only through faith in the ultimate justice of
God can a person forgive those who intentionally hurt us.

YOU WILL NEED A COMMUNITY

But forgiving those who sin against us is not possible in our strength alone.It takes a community to be able find and to give forgiveness.Just as important as the forgiveness given to
the paralyzed man, is the ‘faith’
(Mk. 2:5) of his four friends who brought him to Jesus.He would not have received the forgiveness Jesus
gave unless they had lifted him up, broke through the barriers to bring him
into Christ’s presence.

This image of a person ‘paralyzed’ by life, needing the help of others to find
the gift of God’s forgiveness, reminds me of a powerful story I heard which
came out of the aftershock of September eleventh, 2001.As we all recall, many people flocked back into
churches after the attacks; some who had only recently become delinquents from
church, and others who hadn’t been in church for many years.I can’t recall the source of the story, but
it was told as one man realized he needed to come back to church, he told his
friends it he couldn’t because it would be hypocritical for him.He said that when they came to the part of
the service where it was customary to pray “Father
forgive, as we forgive”he said with
all that has just happened, he just couldn’t pray that right now. “That’s O.K.”, his
friends replied.“Come and pray with us,
and when we come to that part of the prayer, you go silent, and we will pray it
for you until the day you can pray it again.”

Isn’t this what we all need a ‘community’ for?We all have times when it is impossible for
us to be fully Christian, even when we desire to be with our whole heart.The
Christian life is, in some ways, always impossible, but it can be especially impossible
when it comes to forgiving an intended hurt.We not only need God’s help to do this, but we will also need the help
and strength of our brothers and sisters in faith.Because they want to do the will of God, just
as we do, sometimes only they, and their strength will be able to pull us
along, when we are tempted, weak, or incapable of following the demands of the
gospel for ourselves.

Forgiveness is always hard, and it is sometimes impossible for us.And shouldn’t it be nearly ‘impossible’ if it
IS really from God?Recall that
wonderful line from the the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Alice and Wonderland.Alice
had just protested that ‘one can’t do
impossible things.”“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,”
said the Queen.“When I was younger, I
always did it for half an hour a day.Why, sometimes I’ve believe as many as six impossible things before
breakfast” (http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Quotations/Dodgson.html).

Forgiveness is one of those ‘impossible’ demands of the gospel, which will
almost always seems impossible in that moment as we are most hurt, but as time
goes by, that forgiveness become the ‘impossible thing’ that will only make the
most sense.

Forgiveness will finally make sense to us because it is the only thing
which will finally release us from the ‘hurt’ and allow to heal us, and help us
conquer our hurt, so we can move on toward the future God wants to give
us.Only by living toward this ‘future’ can
the full healing power of forgiveness be released within to change and reshape
us.

Thispower to forgive, as we are
forgiven, does not always happen all at once.We will not always have the power
to pray, “Father forgive them, for they
know not what they do”, as Jesus did.We aren’t Jesus.We can’t do
this alone.But we can have Christ’s
power released in us, and this is why we need ‘others’ who share the vision of
God’s coming kingdom with us.We need
their strength, for this is how God strengthens us, so that when life has us on
the ‘ropes’ and takes our own strength away, we will have God’s presence and
power given to us through the strength of others who’s concern and care remind
us that only God’s redeeming love and grace can and will fully and finally
redeem us all.

MOVING BEYOND YOURSELF

To do the ‘impossible’ work of forgiveness will mean doing the most
impossible thing of removing your own ‘self’ from the center of your universe.

Certainly, most controversial in this great story is just that Jesus pronounces forgiveness for this
paralyzed man, but it is in how Jesus
pronounces it.The main concern in this
story is not that this man had sinned, nor is it even that Israel had become a
nation of sinners, nor that that these self-righteous legal experts proved to
be the worst of sinners by all their complaining, but the main offense of this
story is that Jesus announces that God desires to forgive sin without any priest,
without any religious ritual, or without any obvious human input at all, except
for this ‘faith’ that is particularly observed in these four friends who
brought their paralyzed friend to Jesus.

What Jesus is declaring in this text is what the Christian faith must still
declare in the world:God has always
desired to forgive and restore us, even if don’t know how to ask for it.And often, strangely enough, it is not our
faith that is the key to receiving and giving this forgiveness, but it is also the
faith of others who believe in us, for us, and with us, that God desires for us
to forgive and be forgiven. Through
Jesus Christ, God desires to release us from the power of sin to release the
power of healing into our lives, by saying to us, through our own faith, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

While there is a lot of ‘strange’ science in some of Sigmund Freud’s work, there are also some
powerful elements of truth, especially when it come to understanding the
invisible workings of the unconscious mind.Freud attributed the illnesses of many of his patients to feelings that
were deep within, often forgotten by the conscious mind, but still having their
influence upon their lives, in dreams, feelings, and sometimes even in physically
unexplained illnesses.This was especially
the case with one girl named “Anna O”, who was a patient of one of Freud’s
colleagues.Anna seemed to be physically
suffering hysteria from hidden emotional pains experienced early in her life,
but which were still not fully healed and were unresolved in her heart and mind.We might even use the word that was the key
to her healing as ‘forgiveness’.It was
only through gentle ‘talk’ with the patient, rather than cold, impersonal or
harsh prescribed treatments that the patient could be hoped to be cured and
restored to wholeness and health (http://www.psychologistanywhereanytime.com/famous_psychologist_and_psychologists/psychologist_famous_sigmund_freud.htm).

None of us know all the possibilities of the power of
forgiveness until we unleash them into our hearts.And we can’t unleash these powers on our own,
we need God’s help.This is what this
powerful story is mostly about, isn’t it.The help that this ‘paralyzed’ man received from his friends and most of
all, from the forgiving love of God, being unleashed through the healing
presence of Jesus Christ.

Can God’s forgiveness help heal our lives, and
especially our own ‘hateful’ world?Can
forgiveness help us fully encounter the love of Jesus Christ, not only in our own
personal lives at Christmas, but also in the greater world around us?Waldo Beach once said that ‘it is fairly easy
to see the operations of grace and forgiveness within the private circles of
family and friends, for instance in the constant love of a mother for a
rebellious son.But can the forgiveness
of sins be practiced on the stock exchange or in labor negotiations?Can there be such a thing as ‘gracious’
politics?The cynic and maybe even the
‘sensible’ in us would answer “no!”Realism may lead Christians to think forgiveness as only part of our personal
and private affairs.We think it we
should be ‘fair’ in our business and social dealings, but not necessarily forgiving.

However, Beach concludes, there are occasional moments
in history, when political decisions must be infused with and tempered by the
spirit of charity only reflected in the moral goodness and grace of God.One instance he named is seen in the policy
of Abraham Lincoln, one of history’s most sensitive religious thinkers who had
experienced both God’s judgment and God’s grace.As a response to judgment of war, “Lincoln
prosecuted the cause of the war against the south in all its necessary cruelty and
heart ache.But Lincoln too was moved by
the compassion of grace to look for a way of forgiveness beyond punishment.”

In hope of restoring the union beyond the great civil
strife that all had known, Lincoln began his second Inaugural address with an
opening statement of forgiveness, saying,“With malice toward none, with
charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,
let us finish the world we are in, to bind up the nation’[s wounds, to care for
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do
all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves
and with all nations...”Somehow,
Lincoln knew one can’t fully experience healing until you fully forgive.Only by offering healing do you receive the fullness
of healing yourself.And our greatest healing
often begins with the simplest of words such as: “Child, Your sins are forgiven!Amen.

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About Me

With over 30 years of pastoral experience, I've been the pastor of churches in both North Carolina and Germany, where my wife and I served as Missionaries in the 1990's. I'm currently serving as the pastor of two small, rural churches in western Yadkin and northern Iredell counties. I'll be celebrating 30 years of marriage to Teresa in 2010 and we have one married daughter.